Authors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-30-2014

Publication Title

Genome Medicine

Abstract

Molecularly targeted drugs promise a safer and more effective treatment modality than conventional chemotherapy for cancer patients. However, tumors are dynamic systems that readily adapt to these agents activating alternative survival pathways as they evolve resistant phenotypes. Combination therapies can overcome resistance but finding the optimal combinations efficiently presents a formidable challenge. Here we introduce a new paradigm for the design of combination therapy treatment strategies that exploits the tumor adaptive process to identify context-dependent essential genes as druggable targets. We have developed a framework to mine high-throughput transcriptomic data, based on differential coexpression and Pareto optimization, to investigate drug-induced tumor adaptation. We use this approach to identify tumor-essential genes as druggable candidates. We apply our method to a set of ER(+) breast tumor samples, collected before (n = 58) and after (n = 60) neoadjuvant treatment with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole, to prioritize genes as targets for combination therapy with letrozole treatment. We validate letrozole-induced tumor adaptation through coexpression and pathway analyses in an independent data set (n = 18).